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| This cover gets more unsettling the more you look at it. |
Swimming, basketball, tennis. At King Jellyjam's sports camp, it's one competition after another. But Wendy can't get excited about trying to win. After all, games are just for fun, aren't they?
The weird thing is, no one else seems to think so. Everyone seems just a little too desperate to win. A little too keen to be the best. Wendy can't understand it. Just like she can't understand why kids are disappearing. Or why the ground keeps rumbling underfoot...
Plot
We open with our protagonist, Wendy Nolastname, and her brother, Elliot, on a long car journey, complaining that they're bored. I'll give the book this, it's good at conveying its characters' emotions - I'm bored too. After a good 4 pages of people looking out the window, Wendy comes up with a cunning plan to kill their boredom - Elliot and Wendy can ride in the caravan for the remainder of the journey. This is probably illegal and definitely dangerous, but Mum and Dad let them do it anyway. I cannot forsee any circumstances in which - yeah, the caravan becomes uncoupled and they end up rolling down a hill. There, I've saved you 4 chapters.
The caravan comes to a stop outside of the worst place it could've landed - an American summer camp! And not just any summer camp - a sports themed one! This is already the scariest book in the series and we're only at chapter 5. Miraculously, Wendy and Elliot are unharmed and encounter the demonic councillor for the cover, with the unlikely name of Buddy. Ah, the USA. Buddy informs them that they've landed at King Jellyjam's Sports Camp, and they can wait there until their parents show up. Even the book knows this is a terrible idea, as a mysterious girl, I wanna get close to you, appears behind a tree, warning Wendy not to go into the camp, but Wendy doesn't do so, because, in fairness, there aren't many other places to go.
After the book shows us a bunch of people playing sports (get used to that) and Buddy forgets where he comes from, we're introduced to a bunch of NPCs - Dierdre (spelt wrong), Jan, and Ivy, Wendy's roommates who immediately jumpscare her, and Holly, a counsellor, who does not. There's a swimming race on later. When Wendy implies that she doesn't want to compete, Dierdre (god dammit), Jan, and Ivy act as though she's mad and repeat the camp mantra of servitude, "Only the Best." In fairness, you'd have to be brainwashed to enjoy this camp.
After Dierdre describes Wendy wearing her swimsuit in a non-platonic fashion, the race begins. Wendy notices that(you know what, forget it) Deidre really wants to win this race, so she holds back. Deidre does indeed win the race, and wins her fith 'King Coin.' If she wins one more, she gets to walk in the 'Winner's Walk'. There. I just saved you 6 and a half pages. Holly takes Wendy aside and tells her off for letting Deidre achieve victory. That's it. Wendy has a mini-panic attack thinking that something's happened to Elliot before Holly elaborates.
Wendy monologues about how daft the King Coin system is, and that people should just be playing sports to have fun. Great, now I don't have to do it. Elliot disagrees, winning a table tennis tournament to ecstatically receive his first King Coin. After a miniature earthquake, which Buddy dismisses as common, Wendy tries to call her parents, but Deidre stops her (there, now it's a camp story) by jumpscaring her again in order to inform her that she won her sixth 'King Coin.' Given that Wendy is the first person she decided to tell, I'm taking that as hard proof that Deidre has a thing for her.
The Winners' Walk arrives and... it's just some kids walking in file as the campers chant "Only the best" at the end. I can see why this is such a big deal. Wendy, Jan, and Ivy set up a party to celebrate Deidre's victory (it's a few bags of Doritos and 2 cans of coke, and yet it's still infinitely more rewarding than the Winners' Walk), but she never shows up. As Goosebumps protagonists, the girls are contractually obligated to investigate, and so they do. Wendy asks "What could happen?" 3 times in a row as she leaves, so you just know this is going to go well.
Team Wendy sneak around, dodging counsellors and getting sidetracked by thinking of having a quick swim. As one does when attempting to maintain a low profile. The gang get attacked by bats, which in any other year would be perfectly un-terrifying. As the gang decide to give up and hope that Deidre comes back in the morning (what does she see in you, Wendy), the mysterious girl, move your body close to mine, emerges from the trees, pleading for help. The girl introduces herself as Alicia (thank God, I'd run out of lyrics), tells the gang that she saw something terrible, and that they all need to get out of the camp. We'd much rather be reading about this character than all the descriptions of sports (which I've cut in order to spare you my pain), but sadly she never does anything important ever again after this scene.
Team Wendy return to base, where DEIDRE is still not back yet. Jan accidentally opens DEIDRE's draw, and finds that it's empty. DEIDRE doesn't show up at breakfast the next morning, either. Dammit, stop sinking my ships. Wendy bumps into Buddy, and asks if he knows where DEIDRE is. He just says that she's gone, because any Goosebumps NPC worth their salt knows that you can't tell people anything. He says the same when Wendy inquires about Alicia. I sense a promotion for this guy.
Wendy attempts to talk to Jan, Ivy, and Elliot (oh yeah, he's in this story) about DEIDRE, but they're all too concerned about their sports tournaments to care about the missing person. Wendy remembers the phone call she was going to make yesterday, but they're all fake, only playing some ridiculous message from 'King Jellyjam,' the camp's mascot whom I've neglected to mention up until this point. Whoops. Long story short, he's a purple blob with a crown and a goofy grin. It's a good thing there's a specific reason the camp had to choose him, or I'd probably have just shut the book and wrote about something else.
Buddy jumpscares Wendy to tell her that she needs to go... go play some sports, that is! I've cut like a third of the book by ignoring all the descriptions of people playing sports, so all I need to say about the next 2 chapters is that Wendy hits Buddy in the face with a baseball bat, and he acts as though nothing happens. Alright, next scene.
Wendy comes up with a cunning escape plan. Leave Elliot to his unspecified fate, leave the camp, hope no-one notices, walk to the nearest town (wherever that may be), go to the cops, and hope they believe you about the whole 'missing people' thing. That night, she tries to work on the plan, but gets sidetracked by a bunch of the counsellors walking into a mysterious white building. Succumbing to her curiosity (everyone's on top form with the cliches today. Good work, team), Wendy slips in, and sees Buddy hypnotise a ton of the counsellors, removing their senses of pain (good thing that has no evolutionary purpose whatsoever) and feeling in order "to serve the master." At least tell me it's not the John Simm incarnation.
Wendy sneezes, alerting the counsellors' attention to her. They attempt to locate her, presumably to administer copious amounts of hand sanitiser, but she escapes down a convenient stairway. However, at the bottom is a large purple blob with a gold crown. Yep, it's King Jellyjam. They chose to make him the villain. And he sweats snails. Somehow. There are copious amounts of kids washing him, including Alicia and DEIDRE, who tells Wendy that she needs to get out of the camp (honestly, I think anyone would've wanted to do that by chapter 10). Apparently, "only the best" kids get to be King Jellyjam's slaves, being forced to... wash him. All the time. I guess if you're good at sports, that equates to you being similarly good at re-enacting the Whale Wash from Shark Tale. Also, if you take a break... King Jellyjam eats you. What a quaint little story for kids we have here.
Wendy flees as King Jellyjam roars to keep everyone scared (ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system), and does the only logical thing - have a kip in the bushes. The next day, Wendy awakens just in time to show us more sports as Elliot takes part in a foot race to win his final King Coin. Luckily, she tackles him to the floor, assumes he'll believe the whole "sweaty purple blob enslaving everyone to use as a car wash" thing, and drags him back to the basement as the counsellors somehow immediately deduce that Wendy's trying to stop them and pursue her and Elliot. They return to King Jellyjam's crib, where they tell everyone to just get on the ground and not do anything. Luckily, King Jellyjam's arms are ridiculously stubby, so he can't grab anyone. Wendy's cunning plan succeeds almost instantaneously, as King Jellyjam suffocates from his own stench. That was lucky. The counsellors make it to Castle Jellyjam or whatever building this is, and are just about to murder the kids or something when the cops show up, snapping the counsellors out of their trances. Apparently, the cops had been called there because of a terrible smell emanating from the camp and just happened to find a murderous cult based around a big purple blob who could never have evolved if it dies after about 30 seconds of being exposed to its own smell.
Wendy and Elliot return home. In a refreshing change of pace, Mum and Dad were looking high and low for Elliot and Wendy, even calling the camp several times. However, because of the cult of the purple blob who spits in the face of evolution, the camp told them Wendy and Elliot weren't there. Speaking of which, Buddy stops by (I guess he never got arrested for the whole cult thing) to give Elliot his final King Coin. Hurrah. Wait, how does Buddy know where they live. It doesn't matter, because everything is lovely once again. Wonderful. And then the book makes a dumb joke about sprouts. That are being boiled, for some reason.
Any Questions?
Hypothetically, if the counsellors were athletic enough to be running a sports camp, wouldn't they be athletic enough to wash King Jellyjam? Why couldn't he have just used them? They were already brainwashed and probably have more stamina than a bunch of 12 year olds.
Extra Toppings
I initially read this story as part of the graphic novel series. As such, I actually enjoyed it, because half the text wasn't taken up by descriptions of sports and the cartoony art style.
Conclusion
For all its flaws, I can't hate this story. Elliot is probably one of the worst examples of the antagonistic sibling trope, existing mostly to make bad jokes and do sports. Speaking of, the sports. Jesus Christ. I'm not going to go into it, but you probably aren't reading this part anyway. The reveal of King Jellyjam could have been a lot better if he had been... anything else. But I am reading this through a nostalgia filter, so I'm going to have difficulty in not recommending this, but I'll do so anyway.
Next Time: The good guys dress in black, remember that...
Only the most average!
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